The pianist Grete Sultan (1906–2005), acclaimed interpreter of classical and new music, has to be regarded as one of the most extraordinary artists of the 20th century. Raised in a Jewish upper-class household in Berlin, she managed to leave the country in 1941 at the last minute after being banned from exercising her profession and increasing harassment. In New York, she became an established pianist and piano teacher. Here she met John Cage with whom she was bound by close friendship and artistic collaboration her whole life. Cage dedicated two pieces to Sultan.
The first was part of his Music for Piano series, Music for Piano 53–68. In 1974, when Sultan was in the process of learning Cage's Music of Changes, the composer offered to write some new music for her, and the result was a monumental piano cycle, 'Etudes Australes'. Sultan made the premiere recording of the work and played it in concerts worldwide. In the 1940s she helped popularise Bach's Goldberg Variations which she also played in her final recital aged 90 in 1996. The present CD box 'Piano Seasons' contains recordings by Grete Sultan, some of them now being released for the first time, of piano works from widely different epochs: Baroque, classical, Romantic and contemporary music meet here, finding common ground in the interpretation of the exceptional artist Grete Sultan. The boundaries between 'classical' and 'modern' seem to be erased. The charm Grete Sultan brings to the works of Bach, Beethoven and Schumann even transforms the experimental works of Schoenberg and Cage, thus bestowing on them timeless and very personal poetry.
